Search Google Appliance

Engineering, Building, and Architecture

Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.

The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.

Papers documenting the career of bridge designer and engineer Holton Duncan Robinson. The collection includes photographs, including cyanotypes, of bridges under construction; five patents; correspondence; programs; articles; and an 1889 notebook containing calculations

Matthew Mawhinney, an engineer specializing in industrial furnace design and operation, collected this material during his career with Salem Engineering Co. and later as a consulting engineer

Summary

Several engineering textbooks authored by Mawhinney as well as correspondence relating to his articles in professional journals and presentations to meetings of engineers. His correspondence with industrial companies and photographs of furnaces and other equipment are also included

Cite as

Matthew Mawhinney Industrial Furnace Collection, 1917-1978, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), known as Canaletto, etched this view of Venice featuring the Library of St. Mark and the Piazzetta in the 1740s. The Library was designed by Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570), who is credited with bringing the High Renaissance style to Venice. Many travelers were interested in Renaissance and Baroque architecture, as well as the ruins of ancient Rome. Canaletto's views appealed especially to wealthy 18th-century British visitors who came to Venice on the Grand Tour. Americans also visited Italy and collected prints to remind them of places seen.

Canaletto specialized in paintings of Venice, many of which show well-known landmarks. He also made a series of etchings. Some depict actual sites, as this one does, while others show invented landscapes. The Museum's set of Canaletto's Venetian etchings was received as a gift from Mabel Brady Garvan, who, with her husband Francis P. Garvan, built an important collection of American paintings, furniture, and decorative arts that is now at the Yale University Art Gallery.

In places that required many clocks—factories, office and public buildings, or schools—time was often distributed by a system of "master" and "slave" clocks. In such a system, a central timekeeper, the master clock, sent periodic impulses, usually electric or pneumatic, to any number of secondary or slave clocks. These slave clocks could be located anywhere, without regard for convenience of winding, because they needed none. The master clock could also drive other time signals like classroom bells, factory whistles, or time stamps. More economical to install and more convenient to maintain than an equal number of independent clocks, the system also ensured that all dials within the system agreed.

The museum collection contains such a timekeeping system. The system's master clock (Cat. 310,569), built by E. Howard and Company of Boston, is a mechanical tower clock movement equipped with electrical contacts. Once a minute the escapement, through a pair of rotary switches, closes an electrical circuit and sends an impulse to the slave dial (Cat. 310,570), where electromagnets advance the hands. Batteries at the base of the master clock supply current.

This clock and dial were components of a system that served the Smithsonian between about 1881 and 1932. First housed in the north tower of the Arts and Industries Building, the clock movement distributed impulses to eighteen dials in that building and the Castle, the Smithsonian's earliest building. Tunnels under the floors carried the wiring. The clock room also housed a telephone switchboard, a watchman's clock, a central burglar alarm, and call bells—all of which, like the time distribution system, relied on the newly harnessed power of electricity. "Indeed," boasted the Smithsonian's annual report for 1881, "it is believed that in no building in the world, with the exception of the Grand Opera House in Paris, is there so perfect and complete an application of electricity to practical services."

In places that required many clocks—factories, office and public buildings, or schools—time was often distributed by a system of "master" and "slave" clocks. In such a system, a central timekeeper, the master clock, sent periodic impulses, usually electric or pneumatic, to any number of secondary or slave clocks. These slave clocks could be located anywhere, without regard for convenience of winding, because they needed none. The master clock could also drive other time signals like classroom bells, factory whistles, or time stamps. More economical to install and more convenient to maintain than an equal number of independent clocks, the system also ensured that all dials within the system agreed.

The museum collection contains such a timekeeping system. The system's master clock (Cat. 310,569), built by E. Howard and Company of Boston, is a mechanical tower clock movement equipped with electrical contacts. Once a minute the escapement, through a pair of rotary switches, closes an electrical circuit and sends an impulse to the slave dial (Cat. 310,570), where electromagnets advance the hands. Batteries at the base of the master clock supply current.

This clock and dial were components of a system that served the Smithsonian between about 1881 and 1932. First housed in the north tower of the Arts and Industries Building, the clock movement distributed impulses to eighteen dials in that building and the Castle, the Smithsonian's earliest building. Tunnels under the floors carried the wiring. The clock room also housed a telephone switchboard, a watchman's clock, a central burglar alarm, and call bells—all of which, like the time distribution system, relied on the newly harnessed power of electricity. "Indeed," boasted the Smithsonian's annual report for 1881, "it is believed that in no building in the world, with the exception of the Grand Opera House in Paris, is there so perfect and complete an application of electricity to practical services."